I set aside some time for more details of the Vegas shooting to emerge before writing this article. A few important data points have been released, but I have to say that this remains one of the most confusing terror incidents in decades.

The tactical and strategic thought applied in this attack denotes a sophisticated and experienced shooter, yet, we are told by Stephen Paddock’s family and girlfriend that there was no indication that he had such knowledge or experience. There were some advanced tactical decisions involved in every aspect of the staging of the event, yet, there were also a few glaring mistakes that do not fit. Beyond this, there is evidence that Paddock (the alleged shooter) did not act alone, yet, the official mainstream narrative continues to tell us that he was a lone wolf.

Now, every terror event these days produces an endless supply of alternative theories, some practical and some ridiculous. I will be keeping my theories to a minimum here, because I don’t think they serve much purpose in this instance beyond comfort for those that desperately want explanations. What I will be doing is presenting some questions and pointing out inconsistencies. My goal is merely to show that there is evidence which indicates far more complexity to the Vegas shooting than the mainstream media and federal officials are willing to discuss.

First, lets look at how the attack was staged versus what we are told about the background of Stephen Paddock.

Mass Shooter Psychological Profile

Psychological disposition is the root of tactical behavior. It is important to note that mass shootings are an extremely rare occurrence despite the propaganda often poured onto the pages of the mainstream media. Psychological profiling of the people behind these crimes is difficult because the number of candidates is very small. There are, however, some common themes.

For example — many mass shooters are motivated by revenge or envy. Shooters often exhibit signs of sociopathy, a self-centered nature and a lack of compassion along with past instances of abuse and violence towards other people and animals. There is also usually a previous history of mental illness. In most cases there is a “triggering event” which leads to a psychological break and a reaction to violence.

According to the personal accounts from the people that knew Paddock, including his girlfriend, none of these attributes seems to fit. Marilou Danley described him as a “kind and caring man,” stating that he had never taken any action which would have led her to believe he was capable of such violence. The only factor that stands as evidence of a potential psychological break is the fact that Paddock was prescribed the anti-anxiety drug diazepam months prior, which has been known to cause aggression when taken in larger doses.

Did Paddock take this drug because of unrelated anxiety and did it trigger his shooting spree? Or, was his anxiety caused by the fact that he was already planning a shooting spree and the drug was meant to “take the edge off” so he could more easily follow through with the attack?

Paddock was prescribed the drug once in 2016 and on June 21st of this year. I have seen no evidence that he was using the medication in the days before the attack. The meticulous planning that went into this attack, as well as possible evidence that Paddock was renting rooms adjacent to major musical events for some time, shows that this was not initiated by a psychological break. Rather, there was a considerable level of conscious critical thought and foresight.

There is also no available evidence of domestic instability or financial troubles. Paddock was a multi-millionaire with a successful real estate investment portfolio. He was a former postal worker and tax auditor, as well as an employee for defense contractor Lockheed Martin (I have not seen any statements by Lockheed on what exactly he did for them). It should be noted that Paddock, at age 64, was one of the oldest mass shooters in recent history.

Paddock’s father, a bank robber on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, was not present for the most of the early lives of the children according to his brother, Eric Paddock, which undermines the notion of poor environmental influences.

Eric Paddock claims Stephen also had no strong ideological or religious leanings and simply “didn’t care” about such matters. Meaning, no apparent ties to extremist views. He had no social media profiles and police claim they have found nothing in his home computers or phones to suggest a philosophical or political motive. So far I have not seen a single concrete and verified piece of evidence proving Paddock believed in anything other than making money, gambling and traveling the world for fun.

I personally find this extremely hard to believe. Stephen Paddock, for all intents and purposes, was positively the perfect “Gray Man,” a ghost that blended completely into the background, so much so that his own family and girlfriend had no idea that he was amassing the weapons and training needed to pull off the Vegas attack.

The Tactical Know-How Of A Nobody

This is the area which brings up the most questions for me in terms of the Vegas incident. As an avid tactical shooter and long distance shooter, I immediately recognized some strange factors. For instance, the choice of his perch, two adjacent rooms on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, was rather effective for a number of reasons.

If you have the chance to study counter-sniping methodologies or talk with veterans involved in counter-sniping in urban areas, you will learn that the most successful snipers tend to choose mid-ground perches to take shots from. Meaning, they never choose the highest points nor the lowest points, and never shoot from the closest points or the furthest points. Well trained snipers can and do sometimes shoot from 1,000 yards or more, but they prefer to shoot from the “sweet spot” around 300-400 yards away at an elevated point from an expedient hide in the middle of a building or structure.

They do this because when people (including trained combat soldiers) are shot at, their eyes naturally tend to scan for the highest points in the background and the closest points in the foreground first. Choosing mid-ground positions makes snipers more difficult to pick out quickly and also harder for the average person to shoot back at.

I would note that average, untrained mass shooters are more likely to enter a crowd and start shooting at point blank range in order to ensure hits on targets. Paddock chose the position of a trained shooter, which you can see a photo of in this article by The New Yorker. It was NOT thebestpossible position, but a very good one.

Paddock’s choice to fire from the position of a large occupied hotel gave a layer of cover to his attack; anyone attempting to suppress him with their own fire would risk hitting innocent people within the building. Only a person with an understanding of counter-sniping and a scoped rifle would have the ability to stop the attack from outside. Nevada is a very concealed carry friendly state and attacking a crowd at close range on the ground would be a high risk scenario. Firing from the Mandalay was the shooter’s most likely chance of a high body count without meeting opposition, as long as he had the proper training.

The first room Paddock used in the Mandalay is in the corner of the 32nd floor with a view of the concert area and the north. It has a diagonal range of around 400 yards and a linear range of around 240 yards. When firing from an elevated position snipers range targets and bullet drop according to the shorter linear range or “true ballistic distance” (base of the ground to the target) rather than the direct range from their perch to the target. This is because gravity only affects the bullet over the true ballistic distance and elevation in a scope must be adjusted to that distance. It is not as easy as it seems to hit targets from an elevated position, even with an “automatic” weapon.

It has been recently stated by Las Vegas police that the “note” found near Paddock’s body was scribbled with calculations for bullet drop from his position. These calculations can be done with newer laser rangefinders, but Stephen apparently chose to do them on paper. Las Vegas Detective Casey Clarkson was on the grounds of the concert during the attack, and recounted “I’m like, how is he so accurate” (in reference to Paddock) in an interview with 60 Minutes. Yet another piece of evidence showing that Paddock (or someone else) had extensive shooter training.

The two adjacent rooms at the Mandalay offered extensive coverage of possible approaches for first responders. The first room gave the shooter good coverage of the concert and the north approach of Las Vegas Blvd. The second room gave the shooter a very wide angle of coverage to the south approach to the Mandalay as well as the main entrance of the hotel. More tactical know-how on display.

Finally, Paddock allegedly placed small surveillance cameras in the hall approaching his room. A valuable tool which a shooter could use to surprise law enforcement, maintaining a longer period of shooter effectiveness as well as possibly allowing for an escape. Las Vegas police are quoted as stating that it appeared as though Paddock had planned to evade capture. This fits in line with the rest of his tactical staging. His suicide does not.

Things That Don’t Add Up

Again, I am not going to enter into much discussion on theory, here. I am only going to cite some instances of evidence and narrative that, for me, do not make sense. Let’s begin…

The motive: No apparent motive. Paddock led a life of near luxury, had a happy relationship with his girlfriend and gave no indication to anyone of any instability or ideological affiliation. He had no criminal record. He was also well beyond the average age range of people commonly involved in such crimes. He does not fit any of the characteristics of mass shooters. Period.

Three questions can reveal if you have above average intelligence (but it’s much harder than it looks)

Getting into Mensa involves taking a test with dozens of questions, but apparently, there’s an easier way to check if you have superior IQ.

The Cognitive Reflection Test is the world’s shortest IQ assessment and contains just three questions, which appear relatively simple at first glance.

Published in 2005 in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the test has resurfaced online following US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson’s challenge to Donald Trump to ‘compare IQ tests’ after reports he called the president ‘a moron’.

The rapid test would be an ideal option for two such busy men to settle their dispute as it contains just three questions.

However, the test is, in fact, a lot more tricky than it looks and the proof of a high intellect is realising this and working out the answers accordingly.

Scroll down to take the test and find out if you have above average intelligence.

THE COGNITIVE REFLECTION TEST

1. A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2. If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” ― Thomas Sowell

Over the last few weeks there have been a couple mornings where the Schuylkill Expressway was jammed and I had to take my alternative route through the 30 Blocks of Squalor. I hadn’t had this inspiring dystopian experience all summer. There is nothing like West Philly when the punks, punkettes, and future prison convicts finish a summer of not working, not reading, and not picking up the trash in their neighborhoods, go back to West Philly High and not learn again. The observations will be rehashed in a stream of consciousness format, as West Philly is a smorgasbord of squalor, sordidness, filth, apathy, crime and epic government incompetence.

As I inched my way down West Chester Pike in heavy traffic towards the 30 Blocks of Squalor I was seeking signs of the economic revival I keep hearing about from the mainstream media talking heads and our Make America Great Again president. Despite my efforts to see signs of an improving economic situation I witnessed a further deterioration of the suburban landscape.

More businesses have closed. More bars and restaurants are shuttered. More space available signs have sprung up on commercial properties. More unfilled potholes are proliferating on the highways. A once thriving Dairy Queen sits empty, slowly putrefying, just like the neighborhood surrounding it. The lights are mistimed at 69th Street, causing unnecessary traffic gridlock. Exasperated drivers trying to survive another commute to their soul crushing office jobs either fume silently or check the twitter feed on their iGadget. The people on the streets shuffling toward the ancient decrepit subway trains, smelling of urine and BO, look like they could be extras on The Walking Dead.

It is interesting the largest commercial footprint at 69th Street is occupied by our beloved Federal government. It seems puttingArmy, Navy, and Marine recruitment centers all next to each other in the heart of one of the poorest areas in Pennsylvania is good for business. Nothing like luring low IQ boys with no job prospects into the military as cannon fodder for the military industrial complex. They’ve reduced the mental and physical requirements for recruits to such an extent, any mouth breather can make the grade. It does make you wonder how well our military would really perform against the Russians and/or Chinese.

Once I made it through the Milbourne speed trap and crossed the county line into Filthadelphia, the low-lights began to proliferate at a breakneck pace. As you navigate the 30 Blocks of Squalor beneath the Market/Frankfort El you can’t help wondering whether this is actually America or some third world hell hole city in Iraq or Syria. Along this boulevard of broken dreams, decay, debris, dilapidation and delusion rule the day. You are more likely to see a cop car than you are a woman with a wedding ring or a kid being walked to school by his father.

The “Government” of the United States long ago decided they were above the law, the completely illegal covert climate engineering operations are a glaring case in point. Exposing and halting the ongoing climate engineering / geoengineering assault continues to be the primary focus of GeoengineeringWatch.org and the Legal Alliance to Stop Geoengineering (LASG).

Geoengineered skies in Bangor, Maine. Photo credit: Penny Oliphant

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is completely stonewalling the “Freedom Of Information Requests” (FOIA’s) from LASG attorneys. Governmental agencies are legally required to respond to such requests. The US Department of Commerce is the government agency that oversees NOAA.

In response to the government’s illegal withholding of information, legal action has been initiated by LASG against the US Department of Commerce. The statement below is from LASG attorney, Petra Brokken.

Stop Geoengineering Minnesota has brought suit in United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the Department of Commerce, as well as against NOAA, for the failure to respond to requests for information regarding weather modification under a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request. SGM is a project of the non-profit, Minnesota Natural Health Coalition (minnesotanaturalhealth.org), which works in collaboration with Geoengineering Watch (GeoengineeringWatch.org), in an effort to bring attention to weather modification and to litigate issues related to geoengineering and illegal weather modification. SGM has requested records concerning weather modification in the possession of the Weather Service, and the reason for the agency imposing illegal gag orders on their employees. SGM is requesting an order to have the Dept. of Commerce promptly provide the records; declare that the failure to disclose is unlawful; that the failure to make a timely determination is unlawful; that the failure to provide SGM with an estimated completion date for their FOIA request and appeal, is unlawful.

It is time to flush the toilet in Washington D.C., and I am so glad that Steve Bannon has decided to declare “war” on the Republican establishment. For decades, these globalists have told us what we want to hear during election season, but then once they take office they betray us over and over again. It is time to hold Republican members of Congress responsible for betraying the base, and I am so thankful that Bannon is organizing anti-establishment candidates into a cohesive movement. We are going to challenge Republican incumbents all over the nation in 2018, and we are going to win over and over again.

Just look at what happened in Alabama. The Republican establishment spent more than 30 million dollars against Roy Moore and we still won by a very wide margin.

On Monday’s edition of Hannity, Breitbart executive chairman and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon talked about his plan to challenge every Republican Senator up for re-election in 2018 in the primary, except Sen. Ted Cruz. Bannon said Republican incumbents have committed “economic hate crimes” against the “forgotten man.”

Bannon said he is declaring “war” on the Republican establishment and those that don’t back what President Trump ran on. He said there is a “new game in town” and promised to “cut off the oxygen” to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and stop his fundraising for establishment candidates. Bannon said any person running for the Senate in 2018 that wants his support must oppose McConnell as the Republican Leader.

I love this approach. No matter how much the Trump administration tries to work with some of these globalists, the truth is that they are never, ever going to get on board with his agenda.

So the answer is voting them out, and that is going to take a lot of money and a lot of hard work. Fortunately, it sounds like Steve Bannon is ready for the battles that are ahead. Here is more from his interview with Sean Hannity…

HANNITY: Is this a fair statement: Is Steve Bannon declaring war on the establishment that are not for the working men and women in this country?

BANNON: 100{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528}. We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda that Donald Trump ran on and the president of the United States, and that’s the agenda we know that backs the working men and women…

Karl Rove, Steven Law, these guys should get the joke. Their donors are coming to us because they are tired of having their money burned up by trying to destroy people like Judge Moore. It’s a new game in town. We are to cut off the oxygen to Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell’s biggest asset is the money. We’re going to make it the biggest liability. We’re going after these guys tooth and nail.

This is music to my ears, because my campaign has already been trying to promote anti-establishment candidates here in Idaho and around the nation. But obviously we need coordination at a national level, and Steve Bannon can do that.

And the environment is right for this kind of movement. The Republicans in Congress have an approval rating that is so small that you can barely see it with a microscope, and the base is sick and tired of these so-called “conservatives” governing like Democrats. The following comes from Rush Limbaugh…

“Some people make an argument that there really isn’t a Republican Party left. I mean, there are people who call themselves that and they go out and raise money and they raise a lot,” he said. “But whereas the party used to be known for one, two, or three very serious things, they’re not anymore,” he said. “When the Republican Party joins the Democratic Party on things like amnesty for illegal immigrants — that’s not the Republican Party.”

Of course 2018 is just another stage in the war. In order to boot all of the globalists out, it is going to take an extended period of time. In fact, Steve Bannon says that he is ready to go to battle for the next twenty years…

To take your country back – it’s not going to happen in any just one election. This is something you’re going to have to grind out day in and day out for the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years.

It took us a long time to get here. There’s no magic wand we can wave and drain the swamp. There’s no magic wand we can wave and blow up this establishment. I hate to tell people, you’re going to have to work.

But you know what? The grit, determination and courage of the American working men and women – we are going to win.

If you are sick and tired of the Republicans in Congress getting nothing done, then I hope that you will join this fight.

I love the alternative media. For many reasons really, not least of which is not having to lie to everyone everyday. The main reason though is through the alt-media you can find out what’s actually going on. To be sure, there is a lot of speculation and educated, as well as uneducated guesswork but watching the alternative media completely dismantle the official narrative in real time has always been a pleasure to watch.

This is all certainly true with the latest horrific attack in Las Vegas. The official narrative being pushed, that Stephen Paddock, alone and with little experience initiated a massacre and the whole problem is down to to that ‘pesky’ 2nd amendment. Repeal that, and the problem will be solved.

Like many things you might be able to judge motive with a certain amount of back reasoning depending upon what the politicians push for following the incident. It will be interesting to see how the US Liberty act gets strong armed. A Deep State push for this agenda would lend further credence to the multiple shooters explanation currently being developed.

Remember the Patriot Act. A 352 page document signed into law on October 26th 2001, a whopping 6 weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks. This thing was written beforehand for sure and I think everyone can speculate as to why.

I usually like to wait a few days on these type of things though in order to get a more rounded perspective on what’s likely to have gone on.

What’s emerging has been quite fascinating. Certainly adding to the intrigue is a mysterious character names John on 4chan warning people away from Las Vegas and talking about the ‘High Incident Project’ all the way through to Robert Steele, who purportedly actually ran false flags for the CIA giving his opinion that this indeed was a false flag.

Then there’s a question of the expended brass or the alleged ballistics calculation note. The fact that he was on Diazepam, a known drug for the treatment of anxiety (who prescribed him that). Common side effects are nausea or sickness, however, in extreme cases it can cause hallucinations, agitation and anxiety (the very thing it’s supposed to cure) as well as paranoia. The sort of side effects that lead to a mass shooting maybe?

Although taking note of these things I do prefer hard reasoning based on evidence or experienced personnel commentating on observable evidence. Alex Jones is hinting at an ISIS connection and Trump is covering it up on the basis it may contain sleeper cell activation codes. Without any evidence I’ll wait out on that.

One of the first respected opinions I heard though was Paul Joseph Watson’s recent appearance on the Stephen Crowder podcast.

In my opinion he made two wholly general points with his attempt to smear those who chose a different opinion. Despite agreeing with Paul on many issues I thought he was more than denigrating to a group of people putting information and theories out into the Open Source of the internet for scrutiny.

Although there are many click bait sites, and trying to put informative information on any subject while avoiding these articles is a task in itself on a daily basis I thought Paul on this occasion made a couple of woefully inadequate points.

I take complete note of his point about locations of recordings and echoes and the strobe light on the 4th floor. All perfectly possible. Not definitive but perfectly possible.

Firstly though his comments about mike accuracy. While it’s true cellphones don’t have directional mikes and the greatest technologically possible hardware they are excellent enough at recording sequence. What happened in what order. Analysis of sound recording can filter out noise and a mike on a phone can pick out an individual round being fired and an individual bullet strike. It’s also timeline sequential, that is to say it’s a recording of real time in order. It becomes perfect possible to distinguish between an original shot, an echo, distant gunfire and bullet strikes. Each has very different sound waveforms.

Secondly he seems to conflate the whole issue of echoes and muffled gunfire. Apparently being satisfied that muffled fire was the result of Paddock turning around to shoot within the room. This statement can only have come from someone who has never heard an automatic weapon in real life. Assuming he didn’t move greatly, or wrap the end of the weapon in a pillow the sound that emanates from a weapon mostly behaves like light from a torch. Simply turning the weapon around to fire in a different directing produces the same sound to the observer all other things being equal.

The alternative media investigation is starting to move onto firmer ground though. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d recommend watching the Alex Jones interview with Craig Sawyer, a former Navy Seal and, as he lets slip, a guy who has his services used by the government for litigation purposes on weapon sounds. The interview also includes the taxi driver footage and sounds.

You can quite clearly hear distant shots BEFORE Paddock begins firing. They didn’t appear to be echoes, thus discounting a negligent discharge from a Police Officer who empties his MP5 clip into the roof of his cruiser or a civilian performing defensive automatic fire then it is prima facie evidence of a second shooter. I have so far (and that doesn’t mean there aren’t any) heard absolutely no reports of any return of defensive fire taking place. Paddock seems to have committed suicide (another one) before SWAT entered.

By far the best to date has come from Mike Adams at Natural News

Mike runs through the information needed to qualify the existence of a second shooter. Having come from a science background I’d have personally liked to have seen the audio waveforms as well as the sounds played but I have absolute no reason to suspect Mike’s integrity here.

I watched the Mike Adams’ analysis twice, the first time in general and the second time with a sceptical scientific eye. The reasoning I find is sound but rests on 3 key assumptions that I didn’t hear addressed.

Firstly, the 2nd shooter is using the same rifle and rounds as the 1st shooter. For the 2nd shooter to be at a range of 250-275 yards identified by the analysis, you are presuming the weapons are the same. If the 2nd shooter’s rifle is more powerful then the bullet strike sound will be further ahead of the rifle percussion. Thus the calculations need to be altered.

Secondly, the audio pickup is close to enough to the bullet strikes so as to be negligible. If the sound of the round striking the ground has to travel from its impact point to the recording device, this has to be factored in. Mike didn’t show the clip from which he took the audio, but I’m speculating that this may not have been a problem. If the recording device is perpendicular to the bullet trajectory then conceivably the bullet strike and rifle report sounds could reach you at the same time. I don’t conceive this as a problem as Mike identifies the 1st shooter from Mandalay Bay, which is known.

Thirdly, the bullet strikes from the 2nd shooter need to be in the same position, or at least calculable distance in a known direction. If the 1st shooter is firing at your feet and the 2nd shooter is firing 200 metres away, then this needs to be taken into account.

What’s fascinating about all this is what Mike hints at, and I’m hoping the alternative media can help here.

For those not familiar with the principle of triangulation let me briefly explain. It’s a military or civilian idea used to locate an unknown position from known factors. Sailors use it to locate their position on charts near a coastline.

If a ship can see two identifiable landmarks on the coastline then it can take a bearing to each. The navigator can then calculate the ‘back bearing’ (The reverse bearing i.e. the direction of the land mark to the ship) and draw a line on a chart. At this point you know you are somewhere on this line. If you do it a second time to a landmark on a more perpendicular trajectory then these two lines will cross. Where they intersect will be your position.

With sounds the principle is similar. If you know the sound and you know the physical properties of sounds coupled with known bullet speeds then you can calculate distance. Thus a given time between the bullet strike and the rifle report gives you a known distance away for any given rifle and round combination. Drawing a circle around that position gives you infinite but quantifiable shooter positions.

What this investigation needs now is TWO known recordings of the same incident from known location points. You can then perform the same analysis and get a range of the 2nd shooter from two locations.

Possibly you can help here. Despite YouTube and Google cracking down and removing these uploads if you know of two then you should make it known.

A couple of stipulations

They need to be far enough apart location wise so that when you draw the circles it’s easy to see where they intersect. Two recording devices next to each other will produce almost the same circle. The second circle will be within the margin of error and therefore useless. It’s also helpful if they are both equidistant from the bullet strikes.

Secondly, the locations of the devices needs to be known or be able to be calculated. This is critical as it’s the basis for the triangulation. The camera on the phone if it’s recording can help a lot here. This needs to be known so that the centre of the triangulation is as accurate as possible. The more error here the more the inaccurate the 2nd shooters position.

Mike talks about this in his presentation and I’d term the phrase ‘Acoustic Triangulation ‘ for the idea.

The idea being;

With two known locations from which you can calculate accurate distances for the gunfire you can draw 2 circles with precisely two bisecting points.

Your 2nd Shooter MUST BE at one of those 2 points. Only at those 2 points can each recording device have recorded the results they did.

Common sense then comes into play. If point A is the middle of a road and point B is a lovely sniper position then you have almost certainly recorded the position of your shooter.

As a word of caution, elevation plays a role in distance. A man on the 1st floor firing at you is a shorter distance than the man on the 32nd floor doing the same. What you learnt of Pythagoras’ theorem applies here.

As a side-note, one thing I’ve not heard a lot about is how Paddock died. Apparently the SWAT team found him dead after he learned of their presence through position cameras. No doubt all that’s above board.

So, the hunt is on. Out of the hundreds of hours of footage, with YouTube and Google doing their best to get in the way, and hamper a decent alternative media investigation;

Do you know of two recordings from two identifiable positions that capture the overlapping gunfire of the second shooter that have line of sight?

Markets have lately had a certain Groundhog Day quality to them, as in the Bill Murray movie: each day is like the one before.

Gold, the euro and Treasuries were all weak, while stocks and the U.S. dollar kept going higher and higher. It has been this way for several weeks now, ever since the market formed the view that the Fed would raise rates in December.

That conclusion was based on Janet Yellen’s Sept. 20 press conference following the FOMC meeting and her Sept. 26 speech in Cleveland.

I studied Yellen’s remarks closely and read her speech twice. Using my proprietary Fed model, her remarks can only be interpreted as dovish, and the data strongly support the view that the Fed will not raise rates in December.

The market disagrees with this analysis. As of today, the market is showing an almost 90{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528} chance of a December hike. That’s OK. The easiest way to make money is to be out of consensus when the consensus is incorrect. You just place your bets and wait for the market to come to you.

Well, the data came in exactly as I expected. PCE core year-over-year (YoY) inflation for August was 1.3{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528}, down 0.6{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528} from the January reading of 1.9{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528}. That’s eight months in a row of flat or down readings. The Fed is a far cry from their 2.0{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528} target and moving persistently in the wrong direction.

That’s a tribute to the predictive analytic models I use. However, the market continues to cling to what I called its “false belief system.” A shock reversal of the reflation trade is coming, but not yet. For now, complacency and consensus thinking still reign. The strong-dollar, weak-euro, weak-gold story persists.

But not for long. A weak reading in Friday’s employment report added to the pile of evidence that the economy cannot bear another rate hike in the near future, especially with balance sheet normalization, or “QT,” now underway. This quantitative tightening reduces money supply and results in a tightening of monetary conditions even in the absence of a rate hike.

Given the weak economic backdrop and the existing tightening from QT, plus the lagged effect of prior rate hikes, the Fed will take a pause in December. When that reality sinks in, the dollar will weaken and the euro and gold will resume their slow, steady climb that began at the end of 2016.

On top of that, it is now clear that Kevin Warsh will be the next Fed chair — something I first told readers about last winter. The early read on Warsh was that he is a hawk and will raise rates in accordance with the Taylor rule. But I also told my readers that Warsh is a pragmatist, not an ideologue.

The international whistleblower coalition WikiLeaks who have had their sights on the CIA, pivoted their focus to Russia’s own surveillance, offering a look at technical details of how Moscow spies on its citizens’ mobile data online.

The 35 documents in the WikiLeaks “Spy Files Russia” dump pertain to a St. Petersburg-based company called Peter-Service, a software and technology vendor that contracts on Russian government surveillance projects dated between 2007 and 2015. Several of the documents describe how Peter-Service participates in Russia’s digital surveillance operation known as System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM).

“A lot of people try to uncover things about SORM,” Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist toldWired. “So any new technicalities are good. There is some surveillance equipment which is installed on the premises of telecoms and ISPs, which is pretty well described because it’s produced by commercial companies. We know pretty much all about those things. What is a big mystery is what’s going on on the end of the FSB, not just in Moscow, but in every Russian town, because every local branch of the FSB has this equipment and is connected to the local ISPs.”

This latest release comes after countless baselessclaims made by public figures and the mainstream media that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange are influenced or controlled by the Russian government, as the organization has put a lot of focus on exposing U.S. secrets.

The alleged leak shows that Peter-Service is installing software infrastructure all over Russia, thanks to governmental approval, which allows Russian state agencies to spy on its citizens’ online and mobile activity.

WikiLeaks stated:

PETER-SERVICE is uniquely placed as a surveillance partner due to the remarkable visibility their products provide into the data of Russian subscribers of mobile operators, which expose to PETER-SERVICE valuable metadata, including phone and message records, device identifiers (IMEI, MAC addresses), network identifiers (IP addresses), cell tower information and much more. This enriched and aggregated metadata is of course of interest to Russian authorities, whose access became a core component of the system architecture.

Former NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden who is living in Russia and has previously criticized Russia for its own spying on citizens chimed in tweeting, “Plot twist: @Wikileaks publishes details on Russia’s increasingly oppressive internet surveillance industry.”

“PETER-SERVICE claims to already have access to a majority of all phone call records as well as Internet traffic in Russia,” WikiLeaks wrote. One document revealed that the company has access to specific information about your phone and your online payments if you live in Russia.

Under Russian law service operators must maintain a Data Retention System (DRS) that requires them to store data for up to three years.

SIGNUP FOR NEWSLETTER

First Name
Last Name
Email Address

SGT Report is the corporate propaganda antidote. Providing exclusive original content and interviews with some of the best known voices in the world of economics and precious metals. SGT Report is your daily source for truth in a time of universal deceit.